Soothsayer

by Cari Z

  “Just open the door.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “Stop being an idiot and open the door!”

  “Mari!”

  “Cillian!” She looked me up and down and then rolled her eyes. “Oh please, I’ve seen it all before. You’re not going to shock me with your morning wood.” She pushed past me and into the room. “Sit down.”

  “Jesus Christ, you’re pushy,” I groused, but I sat for her. She touched my right arm with warm, tender fingers that belied her snappish tone.

  “I bathed you as a baby,” Marisol reminded me as she peeled back the bandage and got a look at my arm. “Right there in that very same bathtub, so don’t get stupid with me when I’m just trying to make sure you don’t injure yourself further.” She ran her hand up to my shoulder and pressed on the muscles there, making me groan with relief. “You should wear a sling today, let your arm relax.”

  “It’s done nothing but relax for the past twelve hours.”

  Marisol gently smacked the side of my head with her free hand. “That’s all it should be doing, after being shot. Honestly, Cillian.” Her lips were terse lines as she rewrapped the bandage and carefully covered my elbow with plastic wrap. “I called your mother last night.”

  “Ah.” I would have paid to have heard that conversation. “She say anything interesting?”

  “Just that this was a necessary step for you. I asked her ‘how is your baby being shot a necessary thing, huh?’ She didn’t answer, of course. I love your mama, Cillian, but I swear she makes me want to rip out my hair sometimes.”

  “Try living with her,” I joked.

  Marisol sighed as she tied a knot in the plastic. “I know how I would feel in her shoes. I’d want to know my baby was safe. I’d do everything I could to keep him that way.” She paused. “You’re sure, aren’t you? About Tavo?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I see his face beside your bed on the last day of your life.” It was a truth so twisted I was surprised the words even made it out of my mouth, but technically it was true. Marisol had a good bullshit detector, but in this case, I knew she wouldn’t call me on it. She wanted to be fooled.

  She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Thank you, Cillian.” She smiled and then stood. “Phin’s making breakfast downstairs. You’d better hurry if you want to get any of it.”

  I stared at her. “Why is Phin here?”

  “Because I asked him to stay last night.” She took in my expression and began to laugh, evilly, almost a cackle. “What, you didn’t know he’s my booty call? My man on the side? My―”

  “Stop. Leave, go―I don’t need to hear anything else. I really don’t.”

  “Oh, you’re such a wimp.” Marisol grabbed the plastic and left, and I got on with my neglected shower.

  The warmth was incredibly relaxing, and despite everything I might have been tempted to get off that morning except, of course, I was right-handed. It was hard enough to open the shampoo bottle with my left hand, much less resurrect my erection. I showered thoroughly, getting the flecks of blood and the patina of sweat and alcohol off me, and also, maybe, prolonging things so Phin would be gone by the time I got downstairs. I dressed, another bitch of a thing to do with an arm injury, and took a second to mourn the loss of my nice gray suit pants before I finally went downstairs.

  Phin was still there, of course, wearing a fresh pair of jeans and a clean white undershirt. He was sipping a cup of coffee and reading the paper with the help of a pair of spectacles I’d never seen on him before.

  “Eggs and sausage are on the stove,” he told me as I came into the kitchen.

  “Since when have you worn glasses?” I asked as I fetched my breakfast.

  “They’re just reading glasses. I keep a spare pair here.”

  “You’re over often enough to keep spare things here?”

  “We have needs,” Marisol informed me from where she sat shuffling the tarot deck. “It’s not a sin. Come on now, sit, eat. We can do a spread.”

  I sighed. “Can we not? Yesterday’s was kind of inconclusive.”

  “All the more reason to try again today,” she coaxed. “It might provide some clarity.”

  “Fine.” I was such a sucker. I awkwardly stabbed a few puffs of scrambled egg and ate while she shuffled a few more times. The painkiller was kicking in, and the sweet coffee helped take care of my headache. Everything would have been fine if not for the fact that I felt like I was forgetting something.

  “Here.” She handed me the deck. “Cut.” I cut it once, again, and then a third time before handing it back since I couldn’t shuffle on my own. Marisol fanned the cards out. “Now pull three.”

  “My lucky number,” I muttered, but I obediently pulled three cards and laid them facedown on the table. She held a hand over the first one and then slowly turned it over.

  “The Eight of Wands, reversed.” She frowned at it. “Something important is going to happen today. You’re going to want to jump into it quickly, but be careful about that. It could lead to frustration and mistakes.”

  “Sounds like me,” I agreed.

  “Don’t be flippant, Cillian, this is serious. I thought you were planning on staying here another week.”

  “I am. Where would I go, especially with this?” I gestured with my good arm at the bandaged one.

  “Somewhere, if this card is to be believed.” Marisol shook her head a little. “Ah, well. Let’s see what’s next.” She turned it. “Oh. Death.”

  “He’s coming for revenge since I cheated him yesterday.”

  “No, that’s not what it means and you know it,” she chided me. “Death is a sudden and unexpected change, a transition, a―it’s the beginning of a whole new phase in your life.” Marisol looked at me, her concern clear in the furrow of her brow and the downturn of her mouth. “What’s going on with you today, Cillian?”

  I swallowed. “I don’t know.” Except there was something at the back of my mind, niggling at me. “Turn the last one over.”

  She did. “The Hanged Man, reversed. Again.” We all stared down at the card. “Cillian, think, something important must be happening today. Is it related to the man you met yesterday, the cowboy?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “I don’t think so. He was part of it, but…” What was it that had spurred my awful night? “Oh, shit.” I pawed at my pocket for my phone, pulling up the article on it as fast as I could get the damn thing to turn on. I found the picture I needed, zoomed in as best I could, and stared at it.

  I could be mistaken. It had been two years―that was a long time to still be able to recognize someone, especially since he’d only been twenty when I met him. You still changed a lot at that age. Of course, he’d been taller than me already and broader through the shoulders thanks to his Nordic heritage, so how much bigger could I expect him to get? But the curve of his chin, the way his naturally blond hair seemed to reach skyward, the way his hand lay on the side of the gun…it looked like him.

  I pulled back and scanned the article for a name that might confirm it, the name I’d missed the night before. A businessman who’d angered the government of Iceland by moving a portion of his ancestral homeland―emphasis on the land, I had no idea how he’d done it―to America, where it was sitting in a warehouse outside Chicago. Possible ties to the Bróðurlega, the Icelandic mafia. Shit, who even knew they had a mafia? Name, name―there. Ólafur Egilsson.

  It was him, then. Fuck my life. It felt like the floor had just vanished and I was freefalling straight into Hell. “It’s…well.” I swallowed hard. “I think I’m looking at a dead man.”

  Chapter Seven

  Neither of my companions were the sort of people to look dumbfounded after hearing something that should be impossible. They’d each seen too much. If I’d been hoping for a moment of shocked awe, maybe a frisson of fear or two, I’d have been sorely disappointed. As it was, I got ruthless practicality, which was exactly what I needed in the moment. I was already freaking myself out.
I didn’t need to deal with their panic too.

  “What are you talking about?” Marisol snatched the phone from me and looked at the picture. “What do you mean? Who’s Ólafur Egilsson, and why would he be dead?”

  “No, he’s not in the picture. They’re talking about the shipment belonging to him.” I forced myself to speak, to explain. There was a part of me―a big, big part of me, huge really―that wanted to backtrack, to say I’d been mistaken and not go down this road. I hadn’t willingly talked to anyone about this before, ever. The only person who knew about it was my mother. Of all the things we never discussed, this little period in my life was at the very top: more than when I was drugged out of my mind, more than the second time I’d been kidnapped, more than anything. Just thinking of speaking to her about it infuriated me, and she knew that. Not fair to her, maybe, but I was no prince. I didn’t have to be fair to my own mother, not with everything we’d been through.

  Marisol, though―maybe―I could tell the story to. Some of it, at least. And Phin because he was here, and because he reached across the table to press the back of his hand briefly to my forehead, his extensive forehead wrinkling with concern.

  “No fever,” he muttered. “Did you take your pills this morning?”

  I glared at him. “Yes, thanks, Dad. I’m not sick, I’m not high, I’m completely compos mentis.”

  “Well, who’s the one who should be dead?” Marisol looked from the phone to me. “And why?”

  “The blond guy on the right. His name is Sören, and he…” Is the son of. “Works for Egilsson.” They didn’t need to know all the sordid details. “Remember when I dropped off the grid a few years ago?”

  “Of course,” Marisol said immediately. “You didn’t answer your phone for almost a month! I was worried sick about you, but your mama told me not to fuss, that you’d be back soon. And then you were, and you seemed fine and you never said anything. Until now.” Her dark eyes glistened with concern. “What happened, cielito?”

  “Well.” Now that it came to it, the words stuck in my throat. I couldn’t tell them everything, I just couldn’t―it was too hard. I could talk about being abducted as a child, I could talk about wasting away for months in shackles in a backwater Louisiana shed, but I couldn’t talk about everything that had happened with that fucked-up family. Everything I had done. Maybe if I felt less, I could have. “I―” I took a deep breath and exhaled it explosively.

  “I got grabbed in Vegas.” And I should have known better. I should never have gone back to Las Vegas, not after all the trouble it had caused me. I’d been an idiot. “I was knocked out, transported across the country, and when I woke up, I was in a hotel room.” A really nice hotel room, actually. “Ólafur Egilsson was there, and he had some work for me to do.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “He wanted me to help him break a geas.”

  Phin nodded his head slowly. “An old-country curse.”

  “Very old-country.” I smiled in an effort to keep my mouth from blurting things it shouldn’t. “He said it had been laid on his ancestor by a god.”

  “A Norse god?”

  “Yeah.”

  Phin sighed. “I can probably guess which one.”

  “Well, I can’t,” Marisol interjected. “What are you talking about?”

  “A geas, Mari. It’s a magical compulsion. It’s a way of keeping someone you don’t trust loyal, or punishing someone who’s wronged you.” Phin crossed his arms, his fingers tightening on his biceps. “They were simple enough for a practitioner to lay on someone else, but to manage one that followed an entire line…that’s uncommon. That would take some real power. Possibly godly power, and there aren’t many Norse gods who worked magic.”

  “Anyway,” I continued before Marisol could ask anything else, “apparently he’d heard about me back during my stupid phase, and when the geas got bad enough, he paid someone I knew to help him find me.” If Ricky hadn’t already been dead, I would have gone back and murdered him myself after I’d gotten free. He was the guy who’d made me swear off semi-regular lovers.

  “What exactly did he want you to do?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.” I ran my left hand over my face. Fuck, I wanted a cigarette. “He just said I was going to help him break the geas, and then he basically left me alone.” With a rotation of jailers, each one a chip off the old block. Some of them had done more than just watch me, too; I still couldn’t look at a bathtub the same way. “I looked at his fate when he asked me to. I saw what he did, what he would do. I told him he couldn’t escape the geas. He told me to look harder.”

  Marisol huffed. “Sounds like a typical asshole. What was this geas, anyway?”

  “Extreme violence.”

  “Berserker,” Phin mused.

  “Yeah, something like that.” A berserker rage combined with the durability of a curse-strengthened body, and the mindlessness of a rabid animal. “The geas triggered about once a month. He made me look, and I saw him kill.” Not me, because I never saw anything pertaining to my fate, no matter how obliquely I went about it, but he killed a lot of people: people I saw in the hotel, people he made me look at. People around me, and even though the vision went dark when he turned on me, I knew what would happen. I knew that I was next.

  So I’d looked for a way out. I’d looked at his men for weaknesses and found what I needed in Sören. He’d been the youngest of the group, out of place among the stern men in their black and gray suits. He’d been twenty, only there because his father wanted him to be, not because he had any stake in it or that he liked what he was doing. He’d been worried about his father, and then he’d been fascinated with me.

  “I seduced one of my guards.” To put it mildly. I’d been older, worldlier, while he was just figuring out who he was. He’d felt guilty, caught between what he thought were his father’s needs and my own compromised position, but I hadn’t allowed that to keep a distance between us. After a week, we were fucking. Within two weeks, he thought he was in love with me. The last time we had sex, the same night he got me out of the hotel, I saw his eyes change for a moment. I hadn’t been trying to look―it had only been a moment―but they’d gone from clear blue to something alien, the irises swirling like smoke before vanishing completely into black.

  “Cillian.” Marisol laid gentle fingers on my arm, pulling me out of my reverie. “You were the one who’d been kidnapped. Nothing that happened was your fault. Whatever you did to get out of it was only because you had to.”

  “Right.” Only it wasn’t right. The whole reason I’d been in that position was because I’d misused my ability in the first place. It wasn’t right, because somehow, Egilsson had known what I was going to do. He’d known I was going to escape, and he hadn’t cared. It was the manner of my escape that had given him whatever information he’d needed. I still didn’t know what he’d gotten out of my methods. I didn’t want to know; I didn’t like to think about it. All I knew was that I’d joined the long line of people who had taken advantage of Sören’s inherent kindness, his inexperience, and his fidelity.

  He hadn’t come with me when he’d helped me out of there. It hadn’t even occurred to him, and I couldn’t convince him otherwise. His father needed him, he’d said. He had to stay and help him however he could, even though he knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. He was the youngest son, he was family―he was loyal. He stayed, and within the week, that consuming blackness was all I could see when I thought of him. Done, finished. Dead. He’d been the only person to love me who hadn’t known me since I was a kid, and I’d ruined him. The way my mouth went dry whenever I thought of him, the way my heart seemed to sicken and shrivel in my chest―maybe I’d ruined my own capacity to love like that as well. It would be fair.

  “Anyway. I got out with his help, and he paid the price for it. I looked and looked, and all I could see was his death. And now here he is.” I gestured toward the picture. “Walking around carrying a gun.” He looked like his older br
others had, back then. It made me feel a little sick. “I see his death, and yet there he is. So how’s that possible?”

  “Are you sure you’re interpreting what you see the right way?” Phin asked. I stared at him, and he raised his hands peaceably. “I’m not doubting you, but I know how cloudy some of these visions can be.”

  “Mine are never cloudy,” I snapped. “I see him drown, all right? He drowns, and then there’s nothing left. No hint of personality, no sliver of thought, just nothing.”

  “Did you ask your mama about this?” Now Marisol became the target of my ire, but she pushed ahead anyway. “Oh, I know how she can be, Cillian, but surely she’d be willing to help you figure this out if it’s still bothering you so much! She just wants you to be happy.”

  “She wants me to be alive,” I corrected. “She doesn’t care if I’m happy.” Which was a complete lie, but I didn’t feel like getting into a fight with Marisol about my mother less than a day after getting shot. Mom was another person I’d never understand.

  “Cilly…”

  “I’m going out for a smoke.” I stood up and grabbed for my pack and then remembered it had gone the way of the dodo, along with my jacket, my arm, and my fucking mind at this point. I stalked outside anyway, heat burning in my cheeks and chest, and leaned against the warm brick with a groan. My arm still ached, I was unreasonably twitchy thanks to my bad habits, and memories were pouring through my exhausted brain at a painful rate.

  I knew it had seemed like I was the victim here. And I had been, in the plainest sense of the word. I was the one who got abducted, I was the one kept at the mercy of my captors, but the thing is, they hardly did anything else. Compared to how I’d been treated by other kidnappers, their half-assed attempts at torture were minimal. The worst of it by far was Ólafur, big as a mountain as he sat across from me and made me look into his eyes, and cool as an ice flow when he told me I was going to help him cure his geas.

  “I won’t,” I’d told him. “Fuck you,” I’d told him. He’d just shaken his shaggy blond head, somehow smaller in diameter than his neck―the man really was a giant, the widest person I’d ever seen. It was amazing the bed hadn’t collapsed beneath his weight.